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With the Compliments of 

Eben Norton Horsford. 



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Landing place of Thorium on return from seeking Thorhall, at the left of two stumps in front of excavation 
at the right of white area. Fish pit before white area. 







Fish pit on line of stream from the high lands of Mt. Auburn Cemetery in centre. Corner of site of 
Thorfinn's long house in left foreground. Site of two huts on the right above the road way. Mt. Auburn 
tower above the more distant site. 



THE 



PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 

A LETTER TO JUDGE DALY, 

ftfje $rcstocnt of tfje American fficonrapbical Soctrtg, 

ON THE OPINION OF JUSTIN WINSOR, THAT 

"Though Scandinavians may have reached the Shores of Labrador, the soil of 
the United States has not one vestige of their presence." 



EBEN NORTON HORSFORD. 



CAMBRIDGE : 

JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

Slnibtrsita? J3ress. 

1889. 



u~ 









PREFACE. 

In the interest of the reader I have thought to add to the 
recently published letter to the President of the American 
Geographical Society, a few heliotypes borrowed from two 
papers now in press, and include them in an edition for private 
circulation. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 



Judge Daly, President of the American Geographical Society. 

Dear Sir, — As relating to my letter addressed to you March i, 1885, 
on " The Landfall of John Cabot in 1497 and the site of Norumbega," and 
published in the October Bulletin of the same year, I desire to make to 
you the following communication. 

My eye has fallen on two brief paragraphs on page 98, Vol. I., the last 
issued of the seven volumes of the " Narrative and Critical History of 
America." They may be found in the chapter on " Precolumbian Explora- 
tions, by Justin Winsor," under the general division of the Discovery of 
America by Northmen, and are as follows : — 

" Nothing could be slenderer than the alleged correspondences of lan- 
guages ; and we can see in Horsfords ' Discovery of America by Northmen ' 
to what a fanciful extent a confident enthusiasm can carry it. 

" The most incautious linguistic inferences, and the most uncritical 
cartographical perversions, are presented by Eben Norton Horsford in his 
' Discovery of America by Northmen! " 

These paragraphs are preceded by a fragment of history, as follows : 

" The question," — to wit, the Landfall of the Northmen, and the trust- 
worthiness of the Vinland Sagas in regard to their experiences and the 
detailed events of their stay on any part of the coast of New England, — 



6 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 

says Mr. Winsor, "was brought to a practical issue in Massachusetts by a 
proposition raised, at first in Wisconsin by the well-known musician Ole 
Bull, to erect in Boston a statue to Leif Ericson. The project, though 
ultimately carried out, was long delayed, and was discouraged by members 
of the Massachusetts Historical Society, on the ground that no satisfac- 
tory evidence existed to show that any spot in New England had been 
reached by the Northmen. The sense of the Society was fully [7] expressed 
in the report of their committee \?\ Henry W. Haynes and Abner C. 
Goodell, fr., hi language which seems to be the result of the best historical 
criticism ; for it is not a question of the fact of discovery, but to decide how 
far we can place reliance on the details of the Sagas. There is likely to 
remain a difference on this point. The committee say : — 

" ' There is the same sort of reason for believing in Leif Ericson that 
there is for believing in the existence of Agamemnon, — they are both tradi- 
tions accepted by the later writers ; but there is no more reason for regarding 
as true the details related about his discoveries, than there is for accepting as 
historical truth the narratives contained in the Homeric poems. It is ante- 
cedently probable that the Northmen discovered America in the early part 
of the eleventh century ; and this discovery is confirmed by the same sort 
of historical tradition, not strong enough to be called evidence, upon which our 
belief in many of the accepted facts of history rests.' " 

The following on page 93, quoting from Bancroft's third edition, to the 
intent that though " Scandinavians may have reached the shores of Labrador, 
the soil of the United States has not one vestige of their presence, is true 
now" says Mr. Winsor, " as when first written!' This leaves no doubt of 
the assurance of Mr. Winsor's conviction that Mr. Bancroft was a geogra- 
pher as well as an historian. 

Happy Rafn and Kohl, Humboldt and Adam von Bremen, that they 
were not called to listen to such judgment ! 

As to the fitness of Labrador, a region of rocky desolation, ice-bound 
for more than half the year, to be the Vinland of the Northmen, where 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 7 

according to the Sagas cattle did not need to be housed in winter, where 
grapes abounded and corn grew spontaneously, — a land of forests and 
meadows, — there is among students of geography no difference of opinion. 
Among historians the case seems otherwise. Let us hear an Icelandic 
authority on Vinland, referred to and cited in " The History of the 
United States." 

" Now it is to be told what lies opposite Greenland. . . . There are such 
hard frosts there that it is not habitable, so far as is known. South of 
Greenland is Helluland ; next is Markland, from thence it is not far to 
Vinland the Good." 

As to what impress may have been left by Northmen on the soil of 
the United States, that is not a matter of authority, but of what may be 
found by examination. 

Should it turn out, after all, that the Landfall of the Northmen has been 
found, and also the site and remains of the houses Leif and Thorfinn built 
and occupied in Vinland, what then ? ' 

It is quite true that members of the Massachusetts Historical Society 
discouraged the efforts of the immediate friends of Ole Bull here, and the 
two millions of Scandinavians of the West and the East who sympathized 
with him, in his patriotic wish to recognize in a monument, to be set up in 

1 Against the fly-leaf I have placed two photographs of the region of the houses of Leif and 
Thorfinn. The upper one presents a bayou, through which the stream draining the eastern slope from 
Mt. Auburn flows to the Charles, — just outside the limit of the picture. The extension of the 
bayou to the roadway of the "Bank Lane" is given in the lower picture. Just above the road is one 
of the fish-pits, at the margin of high tide and upland described in the Sagas, into which the fish found 
their way at the time of young corn-plants, on their way to spawning-ground on the slopes of 
Mt. Auburn, the tower of which is given at the upper right. At the lower left in the foreground are 
the remains in the uneven surface, before the grass has started, of a corner of the large house of 
Thorfinn's party. In the distance, in the middle of the upper picture, is the " Promontory at the 
Southwest," as described in the Sagas, from behind which the Skraelings issued. In the wood at the 
right is the locality of the battle with Thorfinn's men, which led him to abandon Vinland. 

The landing-place of Thorfinn on his coming from the search for Thorhall, as described in the 
Sagas, is near two stumps at the upper right of the large white space. It is the only spot where 
solid land reaches the bayou, in width admitting the beam of the ship. LeiPs landing-place and 
house were near the lower left of the upper picture. In the extreme distance is Corey's Hill. 

At the end of the brochure will be found a survey of the site of the remains of the Northmen's 
houses. 



8 THE PROBLEM OK THE NORTHMEN. 

Boston, the services of Leif Ericson in the discovery of America. It is 
also true that they virtually caused the rejection by the city government of 
Boston of the offer by the late Mr. Thomas Appleton of $40,000 for the 
erection of a memorial in Scollay Square to the Discovery of America by 
Northmen. 

It is also true that in the paragraphs cited there is, in carefully chosen 
terms, and in a tone of conscious infallibility better suited to an earlier day 
and another meridian, an intimation of the proper limit of geographical 
research, and of who may pursue it, in New England ; and there is also 
an undertone of recognized authority, — all of which will find adequate 
appreciation. One may ask, Is Massachusetts a preserve? 

But underneath these confessions and assumptions, the first and 
most obvious expression of the paragraphs, taken together, is the uncon- 
scious admission that the problem of the Northmen has been again es- 
sayed, and the assailants have been vanquished. They have mistaken a 
question of geography for one of bibliography — and song. 

We are given an estimate of the value of comparative philology in 
finding out the meanings or spellings of ancient and obscure geographical 
names. To those competent to appreciate the wealth of revelation in 
geography there may be in so small a matter as the identity of Norvega 
and Norumbega} this view of the instrument which Champollion and 

1 Norvega and Norumbega. I introduce three fragments of maps. Two are from Winsor's 
" Narrative and Critical History of America," the outlines from Ortelius, 1570, and from Botero, 1603. 
The third is a map for which I am indebted to the late classic geographer, J. Carson Brevoort, who as 
a young man served as attache - to the Legation of Washington Irving at the Court of Madrid, where 
he may have procured the map. It will be seen that they are all copies at first or second hand of 
a common original. They are all maps of Nova Francia. On Solis's map the " river flowing through 
a lake to the sea " flows also through Norvega, a province of Norway, — its equivalent, — as shown 
on the maps of the period. One does not need to be told that the Norvega in smaller type against 
the character that stands for a settlement is i n the country which Leif called Finland, and which 
centuries later was known as Norumbega. As I have for four years been engaged on the History 
of Norumbega, I do not propose to go into it here. This fragment is introduced merely to illus- 
trate that this bit of comparative philology alone, to one capable of appreciating it, contains the 
solution of the problem of the Northmen. 

" The French diplomatists always remembered that Boston was built within the original limits of 
New France '■ {Bancroft's History, 2d edition, p. 24). 







j.*Ca< 



^3 CX CSV.*!. 



ORTELIUS, 1570. 




sojl/s. /s ag 




BOTERO, 1603. 

"They sailed along until they came to a river, which flowed from the land 
through a lake and passed into the sea." Thorflnn's Saga. 












lis 



S\ujbB.q| 







- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. g 

Grimm and Max Miiller and our own Whitney and Trumbull have placed 
in our hands will give occasion for mingled pain and merriment. 

There is another judgment which is somewhat more personal. It is 
cited above, and as it is not impossible that it may be the last of its 
type, it is entitled to particular consideration. It reads: "The most 
incautious linguistic inferences, and the most uncritical, cartographical 
perversions, are presented in Eben Norton Horsfords 'Discovery of 
America by Northmen! " 

I understand this to be an opinion concerning the trustworthiness of my 
methods of studying geographical problems. They are disapproved. 

The author of this paragraph has just completed the editing of the 
" Narrative and Critical History of America," — one of the monumental 
works of the time. The papers of a large number of specialists, includ- 
ing the editor himself, have been gathered, and the authorities bearing 
upon the subjects discussed have been sought out, referred to, and com- 
mented on, and the whole illustrated on a generous scale. This work 
had been preceded by a "Memorial History of Boston," on the same 
general plan. Naturally enough, weight attaches to the editor's opinions ; 
and if it were to be estimated by the volume of work he has performed, 
it would deservedly be very considerable, and there might be some diffi- 
culty in fairly measuring it. But he has taken the trouble to make the 
task a light one. He has adopted and practised a method of geographical 
research somewhat in vogue, but which, possibly, will be hereafter regarded 
as peculiarly his own ; and its value in science can be estimated by look- 
ing at its fruit. The weight which should be accredited to his judgment 
of my method will be seen by a comparison of the fruit of my method 
with the fruit of the method the critic approves and practises. 

This comparison may be easily made. I cannot avoid it; and under 
the circumstances it will not be unseemly in me to allude to some fruits, 
already published (and others in press, or in preparation for it), of the 
methods I have pursued. They include — 



IO THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 

i. Geographical names, of Norse derivation, on numerous maps, ancient 
and modern, in Icelandic, Algonquin, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, 
Italian, or English garb, strewn from Vineyard Sound, in latitude 41 , 
throughout the territory reaching to and including the St. Lawrence. 

2. The rinding of the Land of the Bretons (French) of the 15th and 
16th centuries, in the 43d degree. 

3. The Landfall of John Cabot, 1497, in 42 38', — the great event 
of the 15th century, — on which, with all the glory that belongs to it, 
rests the earliest claim of the sovereignty of England to the American 
Continent. 

4. The Landfall of Cortereal in 1500. 

5. The Landfall of Verrazano on Cape Cod in 1524, and the identity 
of Cape Cod with the Florida of Verrazano and Thevet. 

6. The Canal of St. Julian (St. Johan), the Bay of the Bretons, the 
Archipelago, and the Land — of Gomez, explored in 1525. 

7. The Landfall of John Rut in 1527, and the identity of the St. John's 
of John Rut with Gloucester Harbor, from which he addressed his letter 
to Henry VIII. 

8. The identity of the Cape Breton of Allefonsce, in the 43d degree, 
with the Cape Ann of Prince Charles. 

9. The identity of the Kjolr-nes (Kjalarnes is the genitive) of the 
Northmen in 1003, with the Coaranes of Merriam, the Carenas of Lok, 
the C. de Arenas of Mercator, the Cap des Sablons of the Dauphin map 
°f J 543> tne Cap Blanc of Champlain in 1605, the Insel Baccalaurus of 
Ruysch, 1507, and its equivalent, the Cape Cod of Gosnold, 1602. 

10. The meaning of the Indian names of Boston, the identity of Cabel- 
yau with Baccalieu, — Bacca-loo, Algonquin for Bay food, Cod, — and the 
identity of the Juuide of Thevet with the modern Point Judy of Rhode 
Island. 

11. That the Isthmus of Verrazano separating the Atlantic from the 
western ocean — the Mare Indicum, the Mare Verrazana, the Pacific — 
was simply the neck of the Peninsula of Cape Cod near Barnstable. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. M 

12. That Sebastian Cabot, in his map of 1544, mistook the Penobscot 
and the group of islands (the discovery and cartography of others) off the 
coast of Maine for the St. Lawrence and Newfoundland at its mouth. 
That the part of the map of 1544 including New England and New France 
was an attempt to produce a work that should have the air of original 
discoveries made prior to Verrazano and Jacques Cartier, clumsily dis- 
guising some of the names Cartier gave, replacing those on the Dauphin 
map with others in duplicate to occupy the space, stretching out the 
coast from Plymouth (the Bay of St. Christopher) at the Panther's tail, 
on his map, to Cape Ann (the prima tierra vista), at the best not 
sixty miles to the immediate north, in latitude 42 38', until the coast 
line comprised thirty degrees of longitude, and ended at Cape North in 
latitude 47 , — the mouth of the St. Lawrence. 

13. That the original New-found-land of John Cabot, 1497, including 
the (supposed) two islands passed on his return voyage and shown on 
Cosa's map, faced Massachusetts Bay. 

14. That Terra Corterealis and the Land of Gomez overlaid the New- 
found-land and Islands of Cabot. The original New France, — Francesca 
of Verrazano of 1524, — embracing the same region, was subsequently ex- 
tended by Jacques Cartier in 1534-35 over the shores of the St. Lawrence. 

15. The Fort of Norumbega of Wytfliet (Ptolemy, 1597), occupied by, 
but not the work of, the Bretons, as Thevet supposed. 

16. The explanation of why the coast between Cape Cod and the 
neighborhood of St. Augustine so long remained practically undiscovered. 

17. That the north end of Cape Cod was an island down to some 
time in the 17th century, as shown on the maps of Ruysch, Cosa, Alle- 
fonsce, and others, and as observed by Leif and Gosnold. 

18. That it was on this island that Leif made his Landfall before he 
turned away to Boston Harbor and the shores of Charles River to set up 
his dwellings. 

I will ask attention to only one more. 



12 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 

In my letter of March i, 1885, already referred to, I recorded that the 
site of Fort Norumbega was first found in the literature of the subject, and 
that when I had eliminated every doubt of the locality that I could find, 
I drove with a friend through a region I had never before visited, of the 
topography of which I knew nothing, nine miles away, directly to the 
remains of the Fort. These remains, and the region immediately about, 
were at once surveyed and mapped for me by the City Engineer. 

In a certain sense there was, in this discovery, the fulfilment of a 
prophecy. On the basis of the literature of the subject I had predicted 
the finding of Fort Nortimbega at a particular spot. I went to the spot 
and fotind it. No test of the genuineness of scientific deduction is re- 
garded as superior to this. Professor Henry used to say, " Science can 
predict." I had not guessed, — though any one may guess, of course. But 
if one does, to test the guess or the hypothesis by the touchstones of physi- 
cal fact, sequence, mutual relation, harmony of all parts with each, and 
the utter absence of an element of opposing evidence, is what the scientific 
method requires. Moreover, the scientific man does not hesitate for an 
instant to abandon his hypothesis if it fails in a single particular to sus- 
tain this test. The Fort of Norumbega had passed through the ordeal. 
Prediction and fulfilment of course involve time. Thevet's record waited 
nearly three hundred and fifty years. 1 

19. The remaining discovery to which I have alluded is of the kind 
just presented, — prediction and fulfilment. 

The letter of four years ago, on the Landfall of John Cabot and the 
site of Norumbega, indicated, as distinctly as at the time to me seemed 
fit, my conviction of the identity of the Kjalarnes of Thorwald and Thor- 
finn with the Carenas of Lok, — the great primary fact in determining 

1 This discoverer has been greatly wronged, in ignorance of course, — even charged with forgery 
of Indian phrases, the writer not recognizing in Thevet's records the ancient Iroquois spoken at the 
time at Montreal, as well as in the neighborhood of Boston (Champlain). Some of Thevet's words, 
naturally slightly modified in spelling, are introduced into Lescarbot ; and lists of parallel phrases, 
Including many of the words Thevet took down, may be found in De Laet and others. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 13 

the Landfall of Leif on Cape Cod and the site of the Northmen's houses 
in Vinland. It was of the character of recorded prophecy. This is what 
I said: "The map of Lok presents Carenas [enough recalling Kjalarnes 
of the Norsemen to suggest heirship], the C. de Arenas in various forms 
of so many maps of the sixteenth century, the Cape Cod of Gosnold, and, 
as seems to be determined by the flags of Cosa's map of 1 500, the southern 
limit of Cabot's explorations of 1497." 

At my address in Faneuil Hall, now more than a year and a half ao-o, 
on the occasion of the unveiling of the Statue to Leif, I placed on record, 
more definitely, another prediction. 

I spoke of Leif's Landfall and the site of his houses in the follow- 
ing terms : " He came, so we conceive, upon the northern extremity of 
Cape Cod, and set up his dwellings somewhere on an indentation of the 
shore of Massachusetts Bay, the site of which may yet be indicated? 

I added still another prediction. Speaking of Gudrid, the wife of Thor- 
finn, I said: "I may not fail to mention that this Gudrid was the lady 
who, after the death of her husband, made a pious pilgrimage to Rome 
[from Iceland], where she was received with much distinction, and where 
she told the Pope of the beautiful new country in the far west, of ' Vinland 
the Good,' and about the Christian settlements made there by Scandinavians. 
Nor may I forget to mention that her son, Snorre, born in America at the 
site of Leifs houses, — and perhaps it may some day be possible to indicate 
the neighborhood of his birthplace with greater precision, — has been claimed 
to be the ancestor of Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor." 

I had traced the course of Leif in the Sagas, from his touching at Cape 
Cod, past the Gurnet and Cohasset, to his grounding on soft bottom, on 
an ebb tide, between the site of Faneuil Hall and Noddle's Island (East 
Boston), and his ascent of the Charles on the flood tide into and through 
the Back Bay to the first practicable landing-place, the neighborhood of 
which it was not difficult to indicate in general terms, on tide-water. So 
clear was the language of the Sagas and my conviction, that I veiled the 
prophecies and gave them place in print. 



14 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 

Half a year later, at a scientific gathering, I announced the discovery of 
the landing-place of Leif between two points scarcely a quarter of a mile 
apart, and mapped and photographed the stage of my conviction. 1 Later, I 
determined the spot within a few square yards of where Thorfinn went on 
shore on his return after the search for Thorhall, and again mapped and 
photographed the result of my studies. 

But it is only since the ist of January, 1889, that I have looked for 
memorials, the finding of which I had with purpose vaguely predicted. 
It was not necessary that they should be found, to complete the demon- 
stration. They might utterly have perished ; but happily they have re- 
sisted the corrosions and the accidents of time, and the encroachments 
of increasing population. The terms of the Sagas were to the student as 
descriptive as a chart. 

THE REMAINS OF LEIF'S HOUSES. 

If any one interested will walk from the junction of Elmwood Avenue 
with Mt. Auburn Street, — the residence of Professor Lowell in Cambridge, 
— a few rods down the street to Gerry's Landing, and then follow the an- 
cient Bank Lane to the point of crossing the rivulet draining the eastern 
slope of Mt. Auburn into the Charles, he will be at the site of the objects 
of interest which had once been there, and which I had predicted might 
there be found. 

There are in the inequalities of the surface the remains of two long log 
houses, and huts or cots, — possibly not less than five huts, — along a 
declivity of moderate grade, " some nearer, some farther from the water," 
as the Sagas say. They have all been photographed. 

To help the eye, it may be mentioned that throughout rural Norway 
and Iceland generally there prevails now, as there did, as a general thing, 

1 I insert two charts only to illustrate the method which I have pursued. They present two 
stages of my research. In one I had seen the first possible landing-place above the Back Bay; in 
the second I had not gone far enough to individualize between the landing-places. They seemed to 
be worth preserving, that others might follow up the subject, should I for any reason be unable to 
complete the research. 



CouAJ*x.<ty 







[ttAMhitef 



^ 1 





or t\\e United States iiq 1861 . 
ide . Loia/ Water s^oWrj by doited lir/e- 
Landing Place. 
^s by L.Jvl.fUstirjgs, Civil Eqgiijeer. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 15 

nine hundred years ago, wherever a leader and his company established 
themselves, a principal larger house, and near it, if needed, a number of 
smaller houses, or cots, or huts, for servants and laborers (see Bjornsen's 
article in " Harper's Monthly " of February, 1889, page 426). The founda- 
tions of the Norse houses observed by Nordenskiold in Greenland were 
long and narrow, as these are, and Leif's house presented its length to the 
south ; such has been the immemorial usage of Icelanders in building their 
houses (Saga Time). 

To have an idea of how long the remains of such structures continue 
to be distinguishable, dependent as they are on the artificial unevenness of 
surface, one may read Lanciani's description, in his chapter on the ruins of 
the Campagna, of terraces preserved, and outlines of gardens that had been 
abandoned on account of the malaria before the seventh century, to be 
found on every hand within twenty miles of Rome ; or he may recall, 
possibly, his own recognition of the remains of corn-hills planted half a 
century ago and left undisturbed by cultivation ; or he may have seen the 
palpable Indian paths traversed by Indians hundred of years ago. 

There are also to be seen near Thorfinn's Landing the remains of at 
least three fish-pits described in the Sagas, all at the margin of extreme 
high tide, where at the time the Indian corn had just appeared above the 
ground (new sown, Beamish), as mentioned by Thorfinn. The fish were 
ascending the river then, as generally they are at the season of young corn- 
plants, to find in every tributary rivulet their spawning-ground. 

According to the Sagas, the landing of Thorfinn on his return from 
seeking Thorhall was on the southwest bank ; on which bank, viewed from 
Leif's house (afterwards occupied by Thorwald, Thorfinn, and Freydis), 
there is, by reason of the mud of the marsh, but one place where, with a 
promontory at the southwest, such landing is possible. It was from behind 
this promontory that the Skraelings (the Indian mob) repeatedly issued 
in their canoes, and behind which they as repeatedly retired, — of which 
promontories there is but one, the eastern bluff of the Cambridge Cemetery, 
on the Charles. Verrazano gives it as C. St. Margarita, and to-day it 



l6 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 

abounds in daisies {Chrysanthemum leucanlhemum). Thorfinn saw the 
Skraelings from the narrow, long house Leif had lent him, — its side 
fronting south. The site of Leif's house was near the south end of the 
ancient bluff of Symond's Hill, and immediately behind the point known 
as Gerry's Landing. 

It was on the shore of a Hdp, " a small land-locked bay, salt at flood 
tide and fresh at ebb" (Vigfusson), that Leif's houses — the Norman 
Villa on Maiollo's map (Verrazano's, 1524) and the Ulpius globe, 1542 — 
were set up nine hundred years ago. Verrazano mentions the "lake three 
leagues around " in his letter to the king, 1524. It was " tlie lake through 
which a river flowed to the sea" — Leif's guide to his houses, given to 
Thorfinn and the others. 1 

These are among the geographical treasures that my methods of re- 
search have enabled me to gain for the History of Massachusetts. 



THE FRUIT OF MR. WINSOR'S METHOD. 

We now come to the method which Mr. Winsor approves. We have 
not far to go for an illustration. I shall present but one. 

In the latter part of the year 1885, Mr. Winsor discovered in the town 
of Weston, at the mouth of Stony Brook, a tributary to the Charles, — one 
of the branches of the Rio Grande on so many maps of the 16th century, — 
the remains of an early effort, under the direction of Winthrop, to lay out 
and fortify the future town of Boston. 

I say Mr. Winsor discovered the remains. This is not quite correct. 
What he discovered was that in the remains of an excavation for a ditch, 
estimated by him to be scarcely more than six hundred feet long, in some 

1 If one may illustrate lesser by greater instances of prophecy and fulfilment, I may, without un- 
worthy pride, refer to the study of the Vinland Sagas and the predictions resting upon them, which 
I made, and my finding the places and the remains described in the stories of Leif, Thorwald, and 
Thorfinn, as having their parallel in the work of Dr. Milchofer and Professor Merriam, of Columbia 
College, the director for 1887-88 of the American Classical School at Athens, in the discovery of the 
ancient /carta. (See Seventh Annual Reports.) 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. l? 

places twelve feet deep, and through much of tlie distance carefully graded, 
and paved with stone on the bottom and sides, there were only evidences of 
an early effort on the part of Winthrop and a detachment of his company 
to lay out and fortify the future capital of Massachusetts. 

As a matter of history, within a few weeks after I had discovered the 
site of Fort Norumbega, described with much precision in the early litera- 
ture of the subject, and figured in Ptolemy (Wytfliet, 1597), I invited Mr. 
Winsor to drive with me to the mouth of Stony Brook, some nine miles 
from Cambridge, where I pointed out the details of a ditch, as far as I had 
studied them. I subsequently gave him a map of the spot, prepared by 
the Engineer of the Cambridge Water-works, and my paper containing the 
demonstration that the work was Fort Norumbega, described by Thevet, 
and, less definitely, by others. 

He regarded it as a piece of guess-work. Why should he not guess ? 
He guessed it was an early Boston, planned by Winthrop, and the work 
performed by a part of his invalid company. 

Now, while a guess may be evidence of the fertility of the imagination, 
and has its proper place in research, it is, at the best, only the extempo- 
raneous chalk-sketch, that may vanish with the first brush that tests the 
substance of its foundation, — the last thing to be given to the world, till 
it has been tested. 

What followed the guess ? Let us see. 

He presented it to the Massachusetts Historical Society, and sent an 
outline of his communication to the " Evening Transcript," of which the 
following is an extract : — 

" Mr. Winsor made a communication in reference to a ditch and em- 
bankment found in Weston, at the confluence of Stony Brook with the 
Charles, which indicate, as has been lately said, that a trading-post and 
fort were erected there by the French in the early part of the 16th cen- 
tury. He gave reasons for the opinion that these relics may mark the site 
of an early attempt to found the town of Boston there, since, soon after the 



IS THE PROliLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 

arrival of Winthrop at Salem, he set out for Charleslown, whence, with 
a party, he explored the neighboring rivers for a convenient spot to foitnd 
their town, and discovered such a place ' three leagues up Charles River? " 

To this, as published, I replied on the day of its appearance, and my 
reply appeared in the " Transcript " of January 9. I did not dwell on 
the circumstance that my paper, and its demonstration that the earth-and- 
stone works at the mouth of Stony Brook had been described and occupied 
by the Bretons (French) nearly three hundred and fifty years before, had 
been treated as a mere guess. I tried to place the mistake of the discov- 
ery of the early Boston at Stony Brook in what seemed to me clear light, 
calling attention to the magnitude of the work required to be done by a 
few feeble men in a very short time, — a graded ditch, some of it origi- 
nally ten to twelve feet deep, and much of it paved on the bottom and 
sides (and therefore, as any one might see, impossible to be regarded as 
awaiting posts for a permanent stockade). I alluded to the adverse testi- 
mony of Winthrop 's own map of 1634 ; his diary of his first visit to Stony 
Brook, a year and a half after he had determined that the present Boston 
should be the seat of government, and an almost equal time since the first 
session of the Assistants had been held at his house in Boston ; the ab- 
sence of any supporting contemporaneous or subsequent history ; the 
impossibility of getting ordnance, baggage, and stores up the shallow 
Charles, falling in a distance of five miles, as it did, in alternating rapids 
and pools, thirty-five feet from Stony Brook to tide-water at Watertown ; 
the jealous Dudley's conclusive letter to the Countess of Lincoln ; and 
much more. 

At length Mr. Winsor's full paper appeared. To my surprise, the whole 
of what I had said of the earth-and-stone work as being the remains of an 
ancient fort, the story of which was embedded in the literature of geogra- 
phy, was practically ignored. To an elaborate defence of his guess, includ- 
ing abundant citations from early records, he gave the following additional 
reasons for his first conviction : — 




Stoue wall and canal or ditch near Norse dam. 




Stone wall and canal near the Norse Dam and Sibley's Station. Fitchtmrg R. R. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. Ig 

" The fact that the embankment is continued three hundred feet both 
north and south from the enclosed portion [the fort] in a way to afford no 
protection against attack, seems to indicate that the whole is but a seg- 
ment of a line of circumvallation which was left unfinished, the stockade 
not being planted in the portions already excavated." It will be borne 
in mind that just such an extensive circumvallation as may have been 
here intended was, some months later, established at Cambridge." 

He did not omit to leave a hint of his consciousness that he might have 
overtasked the credulity of his readers as well as of himself. The paper 
was printed for permanent preservation in the Records of the Massachu- 
setts Historical Society. It was also published, as seemed to me due, in a 
second letter from myself, in the " Boston Evening Transcript " of Feb. 
24, 1 886, in which I dismissed the discussion, so far as I was concerned, 
in what was intended as the briefest record of Mr. Winsor's preferred 
views, in his own words. 

It was only then that I fully appreciated the situation. The consider- 
ations that I had presented, the charts, the measurements, the historic 
records, had failed to remove the conviction that the guess had founded. 
His method required that the guess should be defended, in the face of what 
seemed to me the plainest common-sense. He still presented records in 
its support, and still failed to see that there had been a demonstration that 
the works at Stony Brook were described some centuries ago. 

His method permitted all this, and it did not, in his judgment, require 
a more careful examination of the spot, — a second visit to the locality. Had 
he made it, he would have found, a little later, the water of the pond above 
drawn down, displaying a fresh section of the ditch paved throughout, 
making all together, with the circuit of the fort, a length for the " stock- 
ade "(!) of 2,350 feet; he would have found paved ditches on both sides of 
the brook ; and had he followed the brook toward its source, he would have 

1 The length of ditch already explored as indicated on Mr. Davis's chart of Norumbega, by the 
scale which he gives, is on one side of the fort 600 feet, and on the other 500 feet. 



20 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 

found ditches, at intervals, far away, — at least to a point beyond the cross- 
ing of the Massachusetts Central Railroad some three miles above. Much of 
the lower part of the valley is now submerged by the new reservoir for the 
Cambridge Water-works. But had his method required it, he could have 
consulted the records of the Engineer's office. Had he done so he would 
have found that his unfinished palisade, designed to surround the future 
Boston, was scattered along the valley on both sides of Stony Brook on 
a tolerably straight line for three miles or more. 1 But the argument by 
which he supported his discovery would have had its substance but slightly 
impaired. 

With a brief reference to the criticisms of some others, I left the episode 
to be forgotten. It had not occurred to me that the memory of the excur- 
sion to Stony Brook was to take unhappy form and be so lasting, until I 
was stung with the charge of "perversions" 2 in a work to be sent as authori- 
tative over the world; and so I have been compelled to defend and justify 
myself. I may, at the same time, try in a few words to relieve the reputa- 
tion of Winthrop for common-sense from the shadow that has unwittingly 
been put upon it. 

1 I borrow from a paper in press two photographs of a ditch, with a stone wall on one side a 
thousand feet in length, along the valley of Stony Brook and three miles from its mouth, of which the 
preliminary excavations at Fort Norumbega for a palisade for the future Boston, according to Mr. 
Winsor's guess and argument, were a part. 

2 In the " Nation " of May 3, 1888, p. 368, is an article, among notices of books, in which there are 
several phrases that now seem almost familiar. For example : speaking of two books, one of them 
having been disposed of, the critic says, "The other in its wealth of cartographical adornment and 
sumptuousness of page will carry the name of Eben Norton Horsford as the author of the ' Dis- 
covery of America by Northmen ' wherever these adventitious aids can find for it acceptance," 
etc. (a). "The American Scholar has nothing to do with this manifestation in his behalf" (b). 
'■It is those who make no hesitation at perversion and ignore everything that does not serve 
their purpose," etc. (c). " If historical (?) problems are to be settled thus, there is no need of 
training the judgment " (d). " The resulting books are more significant at present in the study 
of psychology than in the elucidation of the problem to which they are addressed" (e). 

(a) There are some persons so constituted as to be willing to accept, without murmur, costly 
photographs of rare and ancient maps, if numerous and on suitable paper, even though to prevent 
repeated foldings the gift should have the quarto form. 

(b) Is there danger of invasion to be apprehended ? 

(c) Perversion is rather a strong word. 

(d) Training for research might not be harmful. 
(e~) Vanquished again ! But why proclaim it ? 



? 




"RIVER FLOWING THROUGH A LAKE 
INTO THE SEA' 

VINLAND OP THE NORTHMEN 

GopieH Cither Ir^slriictiorj toy 

Geo. Davis, Civn Engineer. 



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T.C. THOBFiNtfs Cliff. 




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THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 2 I 

Of course, a new exhibition of this turning to ashes of the fruit which 
Mr. Winsor's method bears, cannot prevent the publication that took place 
three years ago. 

Still another distinct demonstration may be due to those who have a 
right to know the weight of the critic's judgment on kindred geographical 
questions. 

How much did Winthrop do about settlement on the Charles ? 

Winthrop arrived at Salem in the "Arbella" on the 12th of June. On 
the 17th, with others of the principal men, he made an excursion to Charles- 
town and a few miles up the Mystic, seeking a more desirable place for 
settlement than Salem, returning by way of Nantasket on the 19th. He 
saw and appreciated the beautiful Ten Hills Farm, and caught a glimpse of 
the natural advantages of Boston for the seat of government. 

On the 30th of May, almost three weeks before Winthrop made his first 
hurried visit to Charlestown, the " Mary and John," another ship of Win- 
throp's fleet, had arrived at Nantasket. Immediately after landing, Roger 
Clap and some eight or ten more of the passengers, of their own accord, 
seeking a place to settle, went with their baggage, arms, and supplies in 
a boat up the Charles till they reached a point three leagues from its 
mouth, where the river was narrow and shallow. (It had not been re- 
marked as either before. The Charles is a tidal river for nine miles. 
Shallow does not apply to water the level of which regularly fluctuates 
from six to ten feet.) The place they reached was the head of tide-water, 
not far from and below the Watertown of to-day, 1 five miles below the mouth 
of Stony Brook. They found in the neighborhood an encampment of three 
hundred Indians, some of whom were taking fish in the shallow water above 
the head of tide-water. It was called by Josslyn, a few years later (1638), a 

1 The map of the " river flowing through a lake into the sea " sufficiently explains itself, so far 
as this paper is concerned. The spot where Clap and his family landed is against the shallows, — 
perhaps at the entrance to the narrow part between the Arsenal and Watertown bridge, above which 
the fall occurs. Fort Norumbega is at the mouth of Stony Brook. The ditches conceived by Mr. 
Winsor to have been the preliminary work for a stockade for the protection of the future Boston 
may be found on both sides of Stony Brook for a distance of at least three miles from its mouth. 



22 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 

"fall of fresh waters which conveigh themselves into the ocean through 
Charles River, a little below the fall of which they [the inhabitants] have 
a weir to catch fish." Clap's party went no farther. No other party of 
which there is any record went so far, though visiting messengers passed up 
and down. 1 

I have been able to find evidence that Winthrop and his party went up 
the Mystic River, but no evidence that he, with or without a party, went up 
any other river in the neighborhood, or that he directed the party that 
discovered the convenient spot on which to found their town, inasmuch as 
they started on their expedition a fortnight before Winthrop arrived in the 
country, and nearly three weeks before he came to Charlestown. 

The first order that Clap and his party, the " westerne men," received 
from Winthrop, or any representative of the government, so far as I have 
been able to find, was to abandon Watertown and go to Dorchester. 

How do we know that Clap's party did not go above Watertown ? 

The record is that they went " three leagues up Charles River " to where 
the river was " narrow and shallow" The mouth of the river was between 
Copp's Hill and Noddle's Island (East Boston). Watertown is nine miles 
above, along the Charles. At this point they unloaded their baggage and 
supplies, and sheltered themselves as best they could till their embarkation 
for Dorchester, to which, in view of the war news from France, they were 
peremptorily ordered about tlie 1 2th of July. 

They could not have gone farther by water if they had desired to, be- 
cause, as they observed, their boat with the baggage and supplies could 
not ascend the shallow rapids and fall at the head of tide-water. 

But why could they not have gone by land? 

Because they discovered a great body of Indians in their path, of whom 
they — only eight or ten in number — were naturally afraid, and against 
whom they maintained a guard at night. 

1 The Watertown of Saltonstall was in the region of the present Norwood Park and the ceme- 
tery at the corner of Arlington Street on the high road from Cambridge, west, about the sources of the 
numerous springs and rivulets that unite to make a stream emptying into the Charles below the bridge 
against the Brighton Abattoir. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 33 

In conclusion : Mr. Winsor, pursuing his method of geographical re- 
search, including the examination of the historical records, and a single 
visit of an hour to the locality to which I personally introduced him, finds 
the remains of what he prefers to regard the foundations of a fortified 
early Boston, the future capital of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, the 
work of Winthrop's men, at the mouth of Stony Brook on the Charles, 
fourteen miles from its mouth. 

By my method, with the same materials, I fail to find any evidence 
that any of Winthrop's company were nearer to Stony Brook than Water- 
town, some five miles away, till long after the seat of government had been 
established on the present site of Boston. 

As I have demonstrated that the works at the mouth of Stony Brook 
were known and had been described some three hundred and fifty years 
ago, and as I had placed the printed copy of my demonstration in the 
hands of Mr. Winsor long before his communication on the site of the 
abandoned Boston was given to the public, and as I have now, upon his 
challenge, pointed out how one may estimate the value of his method of 
investigating a geographical question where he had before him everything 
needed for forming a just judgment, — I think I may feel that I have vin- 
dicated the honor of your publication of my letter of four years ago in the 
" Bulletin of the American Geographical Society." 

You will, I think, agree with me, that Massachusetts is still open to 
students of its geography and early history. 

I am very respectfully yours, 

EBEN NORTON HORSFORD. 
Cambridge, June 1, 18S9. 






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